Liquid Image Ego Review

The Liquid Image Ego 727 is an extremely compact camera that takes very
good videos.

Its various user interfaces include a smart phone option, but leave a
few things to be desired.

On the other hand, the Liquid Image Ego is one of least expensive HD
cameras out there; it has a list price of $200 but can easily be found for
less than $150.

Introduction

The Liquid Image Ego 727 is a very small camera, about 38 mm wide by
64 mm tall by 32 mm deep and with its protective cover, weighs a touch under
85 grams!

Despite its size, gripping (and not dropping) the camera is not a problem;
the surface is nicely textured in some material that seems like a cross
between plastic and rubber.

The Ego 727 is available in black, while, red, blue, and yellow.

On top
are the only two buttons on the camera, with a tiny LCD screen in between
them.

The front has the lens, a multi-color LED, and a hole for the
microphone and the bottom has a standard metal tripod receptacle.

One side has an opening, covered by a rubber flap, for the micro-SD
card slot, and ports for a mini-HDMI and mini-USB cables.

The Ego is capable of taking HD video in 1080p at 30fps or 720p at 60fps,
each at either a 90-degree or 135-degree field of view. It can also take
still photos.

Various settings on the Ego can be changed by a series of presses on
the two camera buttons or -- and this is fairly rare among cameras -- by
using its built-in Wi-Fi and a (free) smartphone app. More on that in a
bit.

The
basic Liquid Image Ego 727 video camera kit.

In the Box

You get: the camera; a very short mini-USB cable; a mount for the tripod
socket, with a pivoting arm and a flat, sticky tape, bottom; and a clear
plastic snap-on cover. The cover is intended to protect the lens, not to
make the camera waterproof; for that, there's an optional case you can buy.

This lens protector also covers the microphone hole, but that seems to
have a negligible impact on the sound. Sound on a bike is mostly engine
noise, but when I've been stopped and conversing with a riding buddy, the
sound is pretty clear.

The USB cable functions as the conduit for uploads (at about 7 MB/sec.
on my system) and as the charger, too; there is no other means to rejuvenate
the battery. What you need, at a minimum, is a micro-SD card. I bought a
32GB microSDHC Card, Class 10, dropped
it in the camera -- no formatting, before or after -- and it has been working
fine.

You'll also have to buy a mini-HDMI cord if you want to view videos directly
on your TV; I haven't felt the need.

Liquid Image Ego 727 Settings and Options

A one-page "manual" comes with the camera. As that page also
doubles as an eye test, thankfully the
Liquid Image Ego 727 owner's manual is also available online as a PDF
document (in English, German, Dutch, French and Spanish) which can be downloaded
and expanded on your computer monitor.

To turn on the camera, hold down the "Power / Mode" button
for about three seconds. You also press it to cycle through the two HD settings,
a still photo setting, and a "continuous" still setting. Regarding
that last setting, the instructions note that after you "press the
shutter button briefly... you will hear a beep and see the LED flash every
time a photo is recorded." There is no mention of the interval, but
it is about three seconds.

Oh, and the beeps take better ears than mine to be useful; if I hold
the camera against my ear, I can just hear them.

The other button is called the "Shutter / Select / Wifi Start &
Shutdown" button, and its main function is to start and stop recording.
The other way to set options is to use the Liquid Image Ego Wi-Fi and a
phone app in the iTunes App Store and the Google
Play Store for Android 4.0 or higher (and here is the
Liquid Image App Guide PDF).

Here's the drill: turn on the camera as above, with the Power button;
wait "about 8 seconds" for the internal Wi-Fi software and hardware
to initialize. Hold the Shutter button down for about two seconds (which
changes the blinking Wi-Fi LCD icon to a solid one); go into your phone's
settings, and look for the "Ego" network, which takes a few seconds
to find and lock onto.

Click on that network; run the "Liquid Image" app; wait for
the app to check in with the camera (a few seconds more, during which time
the app gather's the Ego's settings, and also accumulates a list of any
videos that are on the camera). Click on the app's setting icon, choose
which setting you want to change, and touch the new, desired, value.

Simple, huh? The good news is that once you've set the camera, it will
retain those settings across being powered on and off. So, for my purposes,
I settled on 720p/60fps/90-degree field-of-view video, and never have to
mess with the settings again.

It's a little difficult, but you can tell that 720p/60fps is a tad smoother
than 1080p/30fps, so why bother with 30fps? Similarly, I've found that the
90 degree field-of-view setting is plenty wide, and 135 degrees introduces
a more noticeable fisheye effect; at 90 degrees, it's minimal.

Liquid Image Ego 727 WiFi

The Ego 727 does not double as a web cam. When you're connected to it
via Wi-Fi and the Liquid Image app, you can see what the camera sees...after
a fashion, as there is a delay (after repositioning it, for instance) of
a few seconds until the image is displayed on your connected device.

In addition to setting options, you can use the app as a remote starter
for a video. But once you do that, the Wi-Fi turns itself off. So, the app
is now disconnected, you can't stop the recording via the app, you can no
longer see what the camera sees, etc.

In terms of recording, then, the app is only really useful for checking
to see whether you've positioned the camera the way you want to (and then,
optionally, just starting the recording). I find that a calibrated eyeball
is really all I need when mounting the camera, so I don't even do that.

Four months ago, when I was given the Ego as a present, the app was called "Action Connect"; now, it is called
Liquid Image. Since the release of the newly titled app, it has undergone several
revisions.

Although I haven't done it, the mode-showing LED can be disabled,
along with all of the beeps (the ones I can't hear). There doesn't seem
to be a way to accomplish these same tasks without using the app, by the
way.

There have also been three or four firmware releases in that time, so
Liquid Image (the company, not the app) seems serious about enhancing this
product and the software that interacts with it. I have the Liquid Image
app installed on my iPhone4. It is also available for Android devices, although
I've read (on the usually reliable Internet) that it seems to work OK with
only some of those devices, running only some of the Android operating systems
-- your mileage may vary.

Recording Video with the Liquid Image Ego 727

All right, enough about specifications and setups. Mount the camera,
press the Power button for a bit, and a quick press of the Shutter button
puts you on the air. The camera will run until you press the Shutter button
again, which ends the video.

Pressing the Shutter button again will start a second-named video, and
so forth. If you don't stop a recording within about 29 minutes, the Ego
will, by itself, terminate the current one and immediately start a new one
for you. This is not a bad practice, in my opinion, given the file sizes
involved.

I let this happen three times, and the sizes of the files ranged from
2.3GB - 2.6GB. Assuming that you have a normal PC or Mac, and that you'll
be doing some editing of these files, I don't think you'll want to work
with files much bigger than that.

Recording will also (obviously) end when the Ego 727 battery runs out.
Fully charging the Ego the day before, in my "run-it-'til-it-won't"
test, the battery lasted one hour and 49 minutes. The total storage size
of the six files in that test was 9.2GB.

And if you're interested, I'll save you the trouble: that's about 87MB/minute
of recording. Just to be precise, these 720p/60fps videos are 1280x720 pixels
(for the HD standard 16:9 aspect ratio) and are generated as .MOV files
(the Apple standard) using the H.264 codec.

But wait, there's more. For each of these HD videos, a second one is
created, identical, except that it is a 432 x 240p, 30fps, video. I guess
this saves having to use file conversion software if you want to upload
them to social networking sites.

In any event: 1) there's no way to turn off this behavior, and; 2) these
duplicate files are about 5% of the size of the corresponding HD files,
and I have not included them in my earlier size calculations.

I'm not a video expert -- in fact, I'm quite new to the world of making
movies -- but I think the videos are very good. The colors are nicely, but
not overly, saturated, motion is not choppy, and the focus seems crisp.

One thing to note: as with many sport-oriented video cameras, there is
no image stabilization, which I'm not sure you'd want, anyway. I mounted
the Ego to the left-side crash bar on my Victory; when those two very large
cylinders are ramping up, you'll definitely see the effects of this vibration in the video below.
On the other hand, when the bike is not accelerating, you'll get a better
idea of the inherent quality.

Here's another YouTube
video sample. These were shot by mounting the Ego to the center of the
handlebars on a new BMW F 800 ST (behind its steeply raked, and un-cleaned,
windshield) at a BMW dealer; the first one shows just this ride, while the
second one shows the F800ST following a C650GT, also being test-ridden.

wBW
Video: Liquid Image Ego 727 On-Road Example

NOTE: YouTube compression degrades the quality
of the video from the original. Select 720p quality under the
"gear" icon in the YouTube video for higher quality display. Sample
Ego 727 Video: Here is an unprocessed
720p sample (.zip)
taken directly from the Liquid Image Ego 727 video camera. The file
is in .zip format, saved in its original .MOV format and the .zip
file includes a .jpg image showing the recording properties for
the sample.

Conclusion

For the money (ah yes -- always that disclaimer!), I think the Liquid
Image Ego 727 is a fine camera. Despite some user-interface quirks and oddities,
it's light, small, and, most important, takes very good HD videos.

If you already have, say, a RAM mount with a tripod screw and a micro-SD
card (and an iPhone would be nice, too), then the Ego represents
a real bargain in the world of quality on-board HD motorcycle video cameras.

Comments are ordered from most recent to oldest.
Not all comments will be published (details). Comments may be edited for
clarity prior to publication.

From "D" (October 2013): "I have two of (the Liquid Ego 727)
cameras and I'm having trouble related to this part of the review and nobody
seems to have an answer: "If you don't stop a recording within about 29 minutes,
the Ego will, by itself, terminate the current one and immediately start a new
one for you."

The thing is, my camera just stops recording at about 30 minutes and
sits there, powered on but idle, it stops and doesn't make a new video
or anything. It has battery and empty card space remaining.

I had a problem too with the camera overheating, under normal use the
camera reached 45°C on the back cover, if it ever gets under the
sunlight the display will show "Hot" and the camera will turn off. I
bought two Liquid Ego 727 (cameras) to take multi-angle footage (my main
camera is a drift HD) but I cannot make them work properly.

I already upgraded to the latest firmware (Jun-18-2013). If you guys
used the camera long enough, have you ran into the same problems as me?
It's kinda disappointing to invest in something that doesn't work when I
could've bought a proper GoPro or a Drift Ghost instead. I'm getting no
response from the manufacturer (Liquid Image) or the seller (RevZilla.com)
regarding this."

Bill's Reply: I have not had any problems with my Ego 727, but
what seems like a lot of owners (given the Internet's propensity to
magnify such things) have not been so fortunate. And, yes, problems
include updating the firmware, the camera's getting hot, and its
shutting down after 29 minutes or so.

Let's look at the firmware
first. My current version is 3.3.1.0 (see attached iPhone4 screen grab
below),
and I've upgraded the Ego a couple of times without incident. You don't
mention what version you're running; if it's less than that, you
definitely should upgrade.

The most recent upgrades appear not at Liquid
Image's site, but at
Weltin's site here. Liquid Image -- for instance, at the
support page --
directs you to (here), which not
only is not on its corporate site but also contains a non-current
version (3.2.1.0).

On that Liquid Image support page, the company
alludes to another problem, viz.: "If you are running version V2.2.1.0,
please contact Technical Support for the correct firmware update." That
is, it seems that certain older firmware versions make upgrading
difficult or perhaps impossible.

All in all, yes, a very sloppy system
on Liquid Image's part.

If upgrading to 3.3.1.0 doesn't solve all of
your problems (or you're already running that version), let me suggest
some reading for you. There is a British blogger, Mat, who refers to his
site as Techmoan; he does very in-depth reviews, mostly of cameras. For
the Ego, he has a
two-part review.

Go to each of those pages, and read through the comments of the
readers at the bottom of the pages. Some of these are questions, and
some of those questions are answered by Techmoan or by other readers
(including a few posts by me, both questions and answers).

Note that the
comments, on both pages, encompass several additional pages. i.e., make
sure you click on the "Next 50 Comments" links on each page.

Some
miscellaneous notes: As mentioned in the wBW article, I use a class 10
micro-SD card. If you're not using a good-quality memory card, I wonder
whether that could heating problems.

And speaking of heating, as
befits an action camera, my 727 has always been in motion while
recording. If it has been getting hot, it has also been out in the
breeze, too, on my motorcycle (except for some indoor motion recording,
on Thomas the Tank Engine, going around some tracks). Has the Ego been
stationary when you've noticed the heat?

In short, you have some
company, regarding these problems, and I am truly sorry to hear that...
especially if you purchased the Ego based largely on my review. Keep in
mind, too, that the Go Pro models are considerably more expensive, and I
imagine some users have some problems with those, too.

Perhaps your best
bet is try to return the Ego cameras. Me, I continue to enjoy the camera
(which, by the way, was a gift to me from a riding buddy). If you'd like
to look at some more footage -- more recent and mostly clearer than the
examples shown on the wBW article -- you can browse
my Vimeo HD uploads. Hope some of this helps...